Holy Shitake Mushrooms

I came late to the Julie/Julia Project. I didn't even know about it until after it was completed and I saw the book documenting the whole thing on a discount rack in a local bookstore. It's one of many blog-turned-bestseller success stories. This particular one centers around a blog created back in 2002 by Julie Powell. She decided to take Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and, in her own words:

365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.

It's an interesting idea and a challenging undertaking - there are a lot of crazy recipes in that book featuring some downright disgusting ingredients and Julie makes every last one of them. I hope to blog more specifically about all this one day soon.

In the meantime, I want to focus on the fact that reading this book inspired me to want to reacquaint myself with the now late, great Julia Child. I remember catching some of her shows on PBS as a child and the Julie/Julia Project resulted in my adding disc 1 of The French Chef with Julia Child from Netflix.

Now, I knew I'd had this disc for a while. Somehow, between all these cable channels we have, Blockbuster movies we rent and the fact that Rick wanted me to watch them 'on my own time' (which is bogus, imho), it took time to get around to it. I just didn't know how long until tonight.

After watching the final two episodes (I convinced Rick to watch them with me and we've been viewing two a night for the past two nights), I decided to get on Netflix and see just how long we've had it on the eve of finally sending it back.

It arrived on October 20...2006.

Unbelievable. No wonder I'm always on the verge of a nervous breakdown.